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Dale Skinner's

Professional Information

e-mail: dale.has@crankopinions.com
Click here to download my resumé in Word format.

Skills

Areas of expertise		Database-driven web sites, both e-commerce and content oriented Object oriented application development with Visual Basic 6
Programming languages		Visual Basic 6, C#, C/C++, core Java language, Pascal, Perl, Python, Ruby, VBA for Excel
Web technologies		Active Server Pages, CGI using Perl, HTML, JavaScript, VBScript
Database technologies		ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), Oracle 8i/9i, MySQL, SQL Server 7/2000
XML Experience		Document design, including DTD and schema authoring DOM-based document parsing
Mathemetics Technologies		Maple V, LaTeX
Operating Systems:		Linux, Unix, Windows 98/NT/2000/XP

Current Position

March 2001 -- present
I am currently contracting with the technical consoluting practive of Milliman USA in Seattle. Our main focus is on applications for processing and manipulating actuarial and medical data.

My work mainly focusses on developing health insurance rating systems using Visual Basic 6 and C#. I have also done some XML document design and parsing work, creating documents used to store the state of complex class hierarchies and writing routines to store object state into, and recover object state from, these documents. I have done extensive Excel 2000 VBA programming, and some medical data warehousing development using SQL Server 2000 and Oracle 8i/9i.

Previous Positions

April 2000 -- March 2001
Prior to working for Milliman & Robertson, I was employed with DemoRoom.Com, an e-commerce company located in Bellevue, Washington. I mainly did web developement for the company. Everything was run on the NT platform, using SQL Server 7 for our database work and a combination of Active Server Pages, HTML, JavaScript, and VBScript to provide content. In addition to development work, I also did a little bit of database design and some Perl scripting to aid in our database administration tasks. And I was occasionally forced to dabble with NT system administration.

Portfolio

Here are some of the web sites I worked on while employed with DemoRoom.Com:

DemoRoom.Com
This site provides information on, and reviews of, computer hardware and software to help users make more informed buying decisions. The site was already up and running when I joined DemoRoom, but I have done maintainance on the code for the site, as well as adding new features to the site such as allowing users to submit reviews of products and giving them the ability to sign up for various topic-specific mailing lists we maintain. I have also done maintainance and development on the secure administration site that our office staff use to do data entry and updates for the site.
I also worked on generalizing the code used on this site to allow it to be easily customized to quickly set up similar sites. The first site we have created using this new code base is HardwareRoom.Com.
The DemoRoom mall
This is an on-line store attached to the DemoRoom.Com site discussed above. The code for the store was already being used when I joined the company. I worked to generalize the existing code to allow us to easily modify it for use on other on-line stores (e.g. the ShopAceHardware site discussed below.) I also added new features to the existince code which allow shoppers to send information on products to friends and to ask to be notified when new versions of products become available.
There is also a secure administration site for our on-line stores which I have worked on. Clients and our office staff use this site to enter and edit information about products in their stores. The site also allows us to easily put products on sale and to create coupons which can be used on the store sites.
MarketResearchOnline
This site, which isn't officially on-line yet, allows clients to set-up and administer on-line surveys. You can find a sample survey here. I did most of the database design and set-up for this site, as well as coding all of the pages which present the surveys. I also set up the secure portion of this site which clients use to create and edit their surveys.
ShopAceHardware.Com
A site we did for HomCo Ace Hardware. The site sells the entire line for DeWalt power tools (approximately 1500 items). I addition to doing a little custimization of our existing code for on-line stores, I was responsible for getting all the product and pricing information from our contacts at DeWalt and Ace Hardware and getting all of this information entered into our database.
JavaScript samples
These pages demonstrate some JavaScript coding I have done for various sites. (These pages are best viewed with Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.)
The first page allows users to order a list of item. You can select a block of entries (one of more consecutive entries) from a select box by clicking on the first entry and then holding down the SHIFT key while clicking on the last entry. The "To Top", "Move Up", "Move Down", and "To Bottom" buttons then move the block around. You can select two individual entries by clicking on one of them and then holding down the CONTROL key while clicking on the second one. The "Swap" button then switches the positions of the selected entries. Pages based on this code are used in various places in our administration sites to set the order things appeare in when the sites are viewed.
This next set of pages is used in the Market Research Online administration site to allow clients to preview how their surveys will look. The pages here look nothing like those on the actual site, but you can at least get a feel for how the pages work. Click on the button below to start the demonstration.
To come
Some XML documents I designed for Milliman & Robertson, and possibly a little visual basic program I wrote to parse them.

Last updated: 10/30/2002